Tag Archives: Councillors

LEAKED EMAIL: BUSINESS WEST BEG COUNCILLORS TO SAVE THE MAYOR!

With a vote by councillors due next week on whether to have a referendum on scrapping the elected mayor, Business West head honcho James Durie and friends have got scribbling fast:

FAO All Bristol City Councillors

Dear Councillor

I attach a letter to each of you from Bristol Chamber of Commerce & Initiative – Business West with reference to the motion to trigger a referendum on the Democratically Elected Mayoral model for the City of Bristol at Full Council Meeting on 7^th December. This is a matter of significant interest and concern for us.

Regards

James

James Durie | Chief Executive – Bristol Chamber & West of England Initiative

Executive Director – Business West

Dear Councillor,
Strengthening Bristol’s Democracy
We are writing to you about the motion to trigger a referendum on the Democratically Elected Mayoral (DEM) model for the city of Bristol. This is a matter of significant interest and concern for us.
The DEM model – chosen by the people of Bristol in the 2012 referendum – has enabled all voters across the city to directly elect the leader of the city every four years. As the representatives of business in the West of England, and also as residents of Bristol, we saw the need in 2012 to change the governance model of the city and supported the creation of a directly elected mayor. We continue to support this now and wish to see it strengthened.
We are writing to each of you privately as our representatives in Bristol’s democracy to make clear our position. We will also be contributing to the debate at the council meeting and in public.
Background
We believe in a strong and inclusive economy for Bristol. In 2012, Business West Chamber and Initiative supported the ‘Elected Mayor for Bristol’ referendum “Yes” campaign as we believed that a directly elected mayor would improve decision making in the city, strengthen Bristol, and help deliver prosperity which is essential for jobs and services and the continued sustainable growth of the city.
Over the last 35 years we have had many strong partnerships with Bristol City Council (the regeneration of Harbourside and Broadmead are two). However, our long experience showed us that the system of local government in 2012 – being often short-term in outlook and delivery – was holding the city back. We believed then, and continue to believe now, that stable leadership, which brings the city together, is essential. The five changes of leadership in Bristol City Council we encountered in the seven years before the referendum made stability and consistency impossible for the long-term thinking and decision-making that cities need. It also made the case harder for investment to be made in the city whether by national government or private.
At present, businesses and employers are focussing on dealing with the impact of inflation, Brexit, and trying to recover from the pandemic with major skills and supply chain shortages in what remains a challenging, fast changing environment. And on top of these, there is the need for businesses to contribute to decarbonisation as part of meeting the climate crisis. Many of these challenges are long term and our work to meet these will be helped by strong and accountable leadership. Build a New Future for the DEM model
We are supporters of the Directly Elected Mayoral model but also want to see this strengthened. We want to see strong and effective system of local government which is best able to serve all our communities. We need to ensure that there is consistency of leadership over each four-year period so that critical issues of, for example, transport and land use planning can be agreed and delivered.
The research published in the Bristol Civic Leadership project argued that:
• The mayoral model delivers more visible leadership of the city.
• Direct election gives the individual substantial democratic legitimacy to lead and makes mayors more accountable.
• Successive mayors have been effective in developing a forward-looking vision for the city. • Four-year terms provide stable leadership.
We believe these points are critical in this debate. At the same time, we share the legitimate concerns that the role of councillors in decision making has been restricted and that the expansive remit of the mayor risks overloading one individual. There are other issues, too. Since Bristol adopted the DEM model, the city and its councillors have also supported – and become part of – the West of England Combined Authority. We believe that Bristol still needs strong leadership to enable it to operate as the central and largest component of a city region of over 1.1m people. As national government shifts more funding into regional authorities, we need to make sure that the leadership in the city is right to work in the context of WECA, too.
We want an open debate about all these points so that we can see democracy strengthened as well as retain the leadership needed. We believe that we can find the right way to balance leadership, accountability, and a renewed role for councillors, amongst others, to help the city move forward. We will be contributing to The Mayor at 10 projects. In the meantime, we feel that a referendum will be a distraction and urge that the motion be rejected in favour of a commitment by all to improve the DEM model.
Signed
Jaya Chakrabarti
President
Bristol Chamber of Commerce and Initiative
James Durie
Chief Executive
Bristol Chamber of Commerce and Initiative
Director – Business West
John Savage
Chairman
Bristol Chamber of Commerce and Initiative

****It’s been brought to our attention that the letter is inaccurate. It states:

‘The five changes of leadership in Bristol City Council we encountered in the seven years before the referendum made stability and consistency impossible for the long-term thinking and decision-making that cities need.’

But there were only two leaders of council in the 7 years before the 2012 referendum: Barbara Janke 2003-07 and 08-12 and Helen Holland 07-08!

WEST WING WATCH

SICK COUNCILLORS PUT PARK ON ROAD TO RUIN

9 Replies

SPADstic and Lazy in happier times before they decided to fuck up one of the city’s parks and become objects of mass derision

We have an early entrant for our IDLE SELF-PUBLICIST COUNCILLOR of the year award. Please step forward Labour’s councillor for Windmill Hill, “Lazy” Lucy Whittle.

LIVID RESIDENTS of Windmill Hill and Totterdown – fuming over her and her politically ambitious colleague Jon “SPADstic” Wellington’s top secret plan to build a bloody great ROAD through their beloved Victoria Park – were desperately emailing Lazy Lucy in December only to be greeted by an out of office message.

“Thank you for contacting me, I am currently on SICK LEAVE but expect to be able to return to work within a few weeks, hopefully at the end of December,” bleated Lucy.

Fair enough. We all get ill and can’t work. But wait! What should pop through residents’ doors in late December/early January but a copy of the South Bristol Voice newspaper featuring a ‘Your councillors’ column written by none other than LAZY LUCY, merrily wittering away, without a care in the world, about the awfulness of the cuts she’ll be voting to implement this year.

What type of STRANGE ILLNESS is this that afflicted Lazy Lucy over the Christmas holidays? Too ill to reply to residents’ emails but well enough to write an article promoting herself and taking advantage of free PR in the local freesheet? Truly, an extraordinary condition.

Lazy Lucy and sidekick, SPADstic, may be trying to avoid residents after they supported a SECRET three month public consultation by cycling and concrete charity, Sustrans, into the so-called ‘Filwood Quietway’ through Victoria Park.

This is basically a plan – going to a planning committee next week – for a FIVE METRE WIDE ROAD for cyclists to SPEED through the park on. And, despite Lazy and SPADstic’s comprehensive three month consultation over the summer, virtually no residents knew anything about it!

Unless, that is, they happened to wander into a BICYLE REPAIR GAZEBO in Victoria Park on the afternoon of Wednesday 31 August or they were invited to a few mysterious PRIVATE, invitation-only meetings with the mendacious pair of Labour councillors and Sustrans’ posh engagement manager, Anais “Nincompoop “Leger-Smith.

To add INSULT TO INJURY, Lazy Lucy even used her South Bristol Voice PR column in October to discuss her road-through-the-park plan in vague terms, telling residents, “we are really interested in what the community thinks. So do let us know your thoughts,” a week after the consultation CLOSED!

Lazy Lucy also gave the road Labour’s SUPPORT in her column, telling residents, “[SPADstic and I] see this as an improvement to Bristol’s cycling infrastructure that will bring benefits to communities along its route.”

Now SPADstic, apparently alone and abandoned by sickly Lazy Lucy, and desperate to salvage his six-month car crash career is attempting a REVERSE FERRET at the kind of furious speeds cyclists will soon be doing across his local park.

As hundreds of objections pour in from residents – as they finally find out about the road SPADstic forgot to tell them about – SPADstick is desperately issuing VAGUE and PISS WEAK promises to support the residents he deliberately sidelined and ignored during the three month consultation.

Too little; too late we say. Why did Lazy Lucy and SPADstic DELIBERATELY allow this plan get to a planning committee before telling residents? And why – if their consultation with Anais NIncompoop from cycling’s concrete kings – has been such a comprehensive listening exercise, are HUNDREDS of residents and every community group and school in the area UP IN ARMS about it?

The plan needs to go back to the drawing board and these idiot councillors need to apologise to their residents for their appalling conduct and start doing their jobs properly. Or else.

MAYORAL ELECTION: COCK & BALLS

6 Replies

The BRISTOLIAN has been running stories on and off since 1827. Same old shite really – POWER, CORRUPTION, LIES, THEFT, NEPOTISM AND DECEIT.

One editor in the 19th Century even ended up in the nick for fucking LIBEL would you believe? So it’s pretty fair to say that Bristol and this country have not changed much.

By the time you read this you’ll be electing another pissant (or perhaps the same pissant) as Mayor of Bristol after they’ve made all sorts of promises about housing, transport and whatever else they think will make you vote for the twats.

If anything’s really changed since the 19th century, it’s for the WORSE. Day after day we hear more and more about the state we’re in. One in five kids turning up at school underweight and malnourished. Whose kids? Our fucking kids!

The elderly are dying of COLD or HUNGER. Over 100,000 people in the West Country are reliant on FOOD BANKS. One third are children. Thousands of families go without benefits because they are two minutes late for an appointment with the government.

More people are homeless in Bristol now than any time since the GREAT DEPRESSION of the 1930s. Libraries, swimming baths and children’s centres are closing. The local NHS is cut to the bone. Even doctors are striking over conditions.

Meanwhile we work ’til we drop, get our pensions ROBBED and live in perpetual debt. All the while working on zero hour contracts for TYCOONS buying big houses, flash cars and yachts off our backs.

But we’re all in it together! Are we bollox! The gap between rich and poor is the largest in living memory. Bigger than when Queen Vic lorded it over the Empire.

The Panama Papers and the rich and powerful avoiding tax are the tip of the iceberg. Bankers are getting their bonuses again. And all the local politicians – Tory, Labour, Lib Dem, Green – tell us they’re POWERLESS to stop the austerity measures screwing up our lives.

Really? Is that true? Were politicians in Bristol “powerless” when they voted through a 20 per cent pay rise for council bosses last month? Were politicians in Bristol “powerless” when they kept their gobs shut about the 50 council homes flogged off to property speculators in the last year?

Were Bristol’s politicians “powerless” when they waved through Mayor Crook’s BENT Green Capital accounts? Are they “powerless” to stop our librarians getting shafted? Are they too “powerless” to mention our local academies are run by SPIVS chasing a fast buck?

Are they “powerless” to ask why the mayor’s daughter is being handed hundreds of thousands of pounds of public money? Are they “powerless” to DEMAND the streets are cleaned? “Powerless” to ask why public documents are suddenly SECRET? “Powerless” to ask why their useless housing department can’t answer a bloody phone?

Our politicians are not “powerless”. They’re IDLE, PATHETIC and WEAK. Voting for any of them is a waste of time. They will not help you or your family or your friends. They will help themselves whilst kowtowing to thieving corporations.

Once elected, local politicians will give away the power we give them and hand the running of the city to ELITIST council bosses on big wages working to the instructions of the Tories in Westminster. The politicians, meanwhile, will keep their heads down, enjoy the perks of office and simper that they’re “powerless”.

So what is to be done instead? Because if we don’t do something sharpish, we’ll all be well and truly fucked.

We need to get organised as a city NOW. We need to UNITE the city and start FIGHTING the Tory government in Westminster. We must CHALLENGE the property speculators and off shore property owners in Bristol. We must STAND OUR GROUND against greedy CAPITALISTS making money out of privatisation of public services. We must DUMP the politicians who say they’re “powerless”. We must REJECT the thieving bankers dumping debt on us. We need to fight back.

Organise. Prepare. Kick off. They’re coming for us. We must get after them. Sticking an ‘x’ in a box every four years just isn’t working any more.